Surely it wasn't an easy thing to do, not at all, but she did it. She got over him, for real this time.

Unfortunately, it wasn't one of those things that just dissolved one day, ceasing to exist. It took a slap in the face from reality for Michelle to really accept facts and let him go.

That slap didn't come right away either. It took months, months for reality to break through her looming emptiness and false hope.

She wasted her summer away, feeling like she'd lost herself, but doing everything, and anything at all just to forget for a little while. A new school year began, and although she walked through the halls with a smile and the ability to carry herself with dignity, His absence from the scene was always evident.

She was positive that she was the only one suffering from the lack of his presence.

He promised he'd come visit, and every day, she'd stare out into the halls, wondering if today would be the day she'd seem him standing outside that door, waiting to greet her.

The day never came.

It wasn't all bad though, she would run into him, they'd hung out after school once or twice. Sometimes if she saw him in the morning, he'd walk her to school.

There was the false hope, right there. The time he gave her was more meaningful than it had ever been, and she truly believed that maybe, just maybe, he would change his mind about her.

Then one morning, she stopped hoping. He said something, a casual comment, that shattered her barely surviving dream for the last time.

"What's new?"

"Well, I got a girlfriend."

Girlfriend.

There it was. The finality of it all. He wasn't changing his mind, wasn't ever going to choose her.

At first she thought it was a lie, but it was a confirmed fact. She played it off like it was no big deal, but inside, her jealousy was eating her alive and it was like she had been rejected twice.

That's where it ended for her. White flag up, she surrendered.

Time continued to pass by. She moved on. Liked somebody new. Somebody who also wasn't going to accept her. A boy who ended up playing her for a fool, and used his knowledge of her previous love to get in her head. It changed her. Her heart, already so fragile, had been treated so carelessly. Suddenly, she was confident. She was comfortable in her own skin. She wasn't worried about trying to be good enough for somebody, She had sass.

It's been more than a year since that day she confessed her feelings. It took this long just for her to recover. It may not be so easy to pick herself back up again for a third time. Will she be afraid when love comes her way again? Will someone love her, someone who won't make the mistake of letting her get away?

Is she doomed to be alone?

Or maybe, the third time's the charm.

That's what she's hoping anyway.

Well, this is the end of her story. Or rather, mine.

reviews are nice. I don't know if i'll continue writing, but i at least wanted to finish this story. It's something that had to be told, y'know?

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